“You still got the moves, Belladonna.” Hunter saluted. “Hurry up, Prez, they’ll have my head if I don’t get you outta here alive,” he urged.
She sagged against Wesley’s chest, arms linked around his waist. “I...”
“It’s okay. I love you too,” he whispered, petting her frazzled hair and kissing the top in irregular intervals.
She lifted her head when she heard the serpent’s hiss, and immediately smelled repugnant fumes. “You have to go,” Florence warned. “You have to go now.”
“Prez,” Hunter sputtered.
“Sincere apologies for interrupting heartfelt reunion,” Dr. Giro said. Though dwarfed by the detective, he coated him with mist as black and thick as tar. “I thought it best I introduce you to newest C20 member, Agent Steele.”
Mist crawled into Hunter’s mouth and ears. His face twisted in agony and his pupils rolled into his skull. Mental persuasion seized.
“Is a shame you will never know what you are, you would’ve been valuable in our future,” Dr. Giro said. “Like Giovanni, psychic power stops you from being influenced, and those who can’t be influenced, must be, you know eliminated.” The doctor’s chortling became cackling. The walls joined in and reverberated its sound. He quieted and gave his possessed henchman a light shoulder slap. “Make sure she watches him die first.”
Florence dried up like a well and held out her hand. She called on the one thing she hadn’t lost in twenty years. The sword of Psion, left behind in Zosma’s violent flurry, obeyed the telepathic command, soaring hilt first into her trembling hand. She secured a tight grasp, moved around Wesley smooth and quick, and planted both feet. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug.
Hunter’s metallic fists hit the ground like a sledgehammer. Waves of marble slabs rumbled and rocked the hallway. A column buckled. The ceiling caved.
“Florence!” Wesley exclaimed and pulled her to him by the waist. A section of the mural smashed where she’d been.
Gasping, their sweaty, dusty foreheads touched. She squeezed his wrist. He kissed her temple.
“I’ll give you a window to run to the door,” Florence whispered and disconnected from their embrace. “Promise me you’ll take it.”
“You’re in no con—”
“Wesley, promise me.”
Mid-nod, she yanked him down by the shirt. An uprooted column swung with lethal ambition, rammed against a row of its unbroken siblings, and disqualified the foundation. Lungs overwhelmed by powdered marble and eardrums by crashing sounds, they clambered from under the ceiling’s hailstorm.
“Detective Steele, stop before you do something you’ll regret,” she said, squatting.
“The one thing I regret is pulling you outta the ocean.”
“I tried.” Right foot back, left foot forward, she drew her elbow up by her ear. Her sightline ran beneath the blade and she pointed the sword at Hunter’s heart.
“I can hear the headlines now.” He nodded to Wesley and used a theatrical voice, “President DeVries dies shutting down rogue organization, taking Russia, Korea, and China out of the clean energy race. Great narrative am I right? You’ll be a bonafide American hero. And, psh, Cynque news won’t report on you costing hard working Americans millions, if not billions of dollars. The public doesn’t find out that kinda stuff anymore. No one’ll know there isn’t a solution to the goddamn problem. Until it’s too late.”
Moonlit metals gleamed in the dismal hallway, and two worthy combatants entered a game of strength versus strategy. The Sword of Psion’s true edge led her advance, and the jagged steel’s forward slash clanked across his torso. She pivoted in a full circle on her left foot, backhand sliced through his midsection, and passed back the right foot to switch positions. The blade flattened to him and she parried his retaliatory punch. Hunter cursed and stumbled, and slammed into a leaning column. Her nimble wrists propelled the sword into a swinging frenzy, which ended with her arm at her side. Blood restricted hands clenched the handle. The blade faced out, tip down.
“Let’s see if steel can cut through Steele, shall we?”
“Your fake ass legacy dies with humanity, DeVries.” Hunter snickered as he searched the shadows.
“He’s gone. Give it up.”
His aggression zeroed in on Florence. “You know the thing about Dr. Giro, he thought of everyone. You rich fucks only thought about yourselves.”
She ducked his left hook, rotated 180 degrees and roundhouse kicked him with the psiborg leg. Hunter’s head banged against the marble. Leaping to meet him at his resting place, she thrust the sword’s point down. Hunter stopped it from puncturing his skull between prayer-positioned hands and threw her backward. She lost the sword. She lost her balance. She lost her edge.
Hunter swiveled a leg in a semicircle to a swift recovery onto both feet, retrieved the weapon, and hurled it forward. Florence darted sideways, catching the handle during a rapid open turn, then jumped column to column, poised to deliver a sharp, critical blow. He had other plans and threw a metal forearmed front guard over his eye. Her overhand, centered-slice wedged in his skin. He grabbed her by the stomach and flung her. The marble column that had been her aid became her enemy. Her back screamed on impact, and she landed face down in scattered debris.
“Hope he doesn’t mind if I kill you in reverse order,” he said, lurching to conclude his slaughter.
A plasma pistol’s three blasts singed the air and ricocheted off Hunter’s shoulder. A fourth and fifth heated the element protecting him. The sixth cost him his equilibrium, and he flew aside.
Blessed by the moon’s light for his bravery, Wesley stood tall to take on their adversary. “Stay down, Steele. We’ll get your head cleared.”
Struggling to her hands and knees ended in Florence collapsing on her back. She stared upwards at the unveiled heavens begging her home. “You didn’t take—” The sentence hid in her throat, afraid what truth its completion would manifest.
Wesley’s window was gone. She felt submerged underwater. Drowned in a fateful moment and the world’s hollow noises. His barely audible voice gauged if she was okay. Her arm fumbled for the sword. Manicured nail tips scratched at the dragon head handle, but they could not drag it to her. She extended her shoulder, eyes pressed shut, mouth stretched tight. Crunch. Crack. Thump.
Her lover’s protesting screams, and, “Sorry it had to end this way, Prez,” came before the human vertebrae snapped.
“We... Wes... Wesley,” she choked out. Blood cold as a corpse, Florence witnessed Hunter drilling his mutilated body into the wreckage.
Allister Adams
The thunderstorm had passed, giving Bazzo and Zosma’s heated combat the attention it deserved. Electricity and Z-energy blasted this way and that. Bazzo shouted Allister’s name. Zosma grunted in pain or anger or disinterest. Chairs ripped up by the nails, flung across the room. Then came a tremendous scream.
Allister sat on his haunches and refused to acknowledge her behavior. He didn’t want to see her murderous. Becoming the monster, they claimed, solidified her candidacy as an imperfect sacrifice.
“Stop it, Zosma,” he said.
His blood moved too fast for him to process the energy’s needling pain, and he heaved his leg from under him and flattened his foot. Z-energy enveloped his knuckles. A firm push to his knee and Allister stood spread legged, posture straightened, and squinted. Bazzo held his wrist, his face contorted and boiling red. A metal rod had speared his hand to the wall, too long and entrenched for him to free himself.
Allister took a step at a time and spoke soft, calming words, “Resist his influence, Zosma. You’re not a killer.”
She screamed, “You have no idea what I am!”
The radiating telekinetic field shattered, dented the walls and blew Allister into metal panels. Z-energy had scorched his chest worse than any plasma blast. Smoke rose from the affliction, and his unsteady hand dropped, too scared to make contact. “I-I know you’re more than a weapon.” A sharp inhale, and both forea
rms blocked her double kick. His pushback drove her into the air.
It was too much to ask that she remain there. Too much to assume that he’d gotten through to her. A Z-energy ball formed as she swung forward. He didn’t feel the explosive force, though he flew, smashed a wall to scraps, and landed face down in the grass outside. Close call. Bringing his left arm to defend the strike had given him bonus rounds in the ring. Muddy coolness soothed the third-degree burn. He laid there thinking of words to slow her, confident no human sentiments would penetrate.
Zosma sped his direction, a purple blur. She jumped. Allister’s arms tucked. He rolled away. Boom. Her feet hit the ground. Rocks and dirt spewed outward. He got up, swallowed hard and leaned on the house’s siding.
A living energy source. A fallen world’s princess. A compassionate, curious, and delicate specimen with a spirit luminous as the stars. What else could Zosma be? The mother of his children? Welcome on Earth? Yes. And more. He’d convinced himself no one should define her complicated and beautiful existence by a single attribute.
Fortresses of guilt and sorrow had dominated his mind and soul for months. The emotional constructs, which occupied so much mental space, drove weakness, and such weakness drove impulsion in place of intelligence. There he was, a victim, staring at her as she endeavored to knock his head clean off his body. The burn’s stinging subsided, and restored skin sewed across his chest.
He grabbed her fist before it connected with his face. Hoarse, he muttered ancient Uragonian scripture, “Resilience lies in the sturdiest minds.”
“And purpose is forged by unchained eyes.” Zosma said, almost singing. “How did—”
Her pupils glowed the blue he loved, the intrepid blue of her heritage. Their fingers curled over each other. Touching her was like picking apples from his mother’s garden on a summer day, stargazing with his father on the roof. Innocent, uncomplicated joy he longed for.
She went on, “I thought I was a solution. That is what he told me. I am sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He traced her jawline. “You’ve been exploited and hunted wherever you go. And here you are. Alive. You can do anything, you can be anything. You don’t have to be a weapon.”
“Then, I suppose neither do you.”
Allister saw his reflection in her burning irises and pulled her body to his. Her sweet smell sent shivers down his arms. “Can you see yourself?”
Two of her three fingers caressed his cheek. She nodded.
Dr. Giro’s heavy footsteps crunched splintered wood and crumbled rock. “The brave,” he said in more guttural growls then human tongue, “are always first to die.”
“Rabia is not what he seems, do not—”
Mist swallowed the light in her. She staggered.
Dr. Giro’s face contained no fear. No invitation to battle. Hands clasped at his waistline, the doctor eluded flickering light, vacant, dark eyes locked on Allister. Like planetary bodies in a solar system, their orbit began. Allister was a great storm with his sights set on landfall. His fury hungered for vengeance and Dr. Giro fed it with the gasoline of his indifference.
Z-energy exploded up his left arm and bathed his body in its chaotic light. Tiny, frothy bubbles formed on his mouth’s corners. “It’s over, let her go,” he said.
“Allister, I have toiled my entire existence, ensuring Earth reached necessary milestones for Z-energy integration. I will not be swayed by an insipid child pretending to be hero. No, she will not be let go. She. Will. Be. Used.”
The first punch shattered the doctor’s sternum. Allister retreated, huffing and puffing, forgetting he’d taken a swift, venomous step and swung with his two-hundred-pound body’s entire weight. The kneeling doctor held up a plump, hairy hand covered in blood so red, it was damn near black.
Zosma shrieked.
Dr. Giro stood. His fingers still, his knees steady. No shock. No pain. “I will not stop,” he said.
Facial bones cracked under Allister’s numbed, blood-soaked fist. Dr. Giro doubled over, touched the dent in his wilted, fractured cheek.
“Allister, don’t!” Zosma screamed and retired to sobbing.
He opened his hand and looked at it as the blood rushed to his palm, anxious to see what happened next. “Let her go,” he repeated.
“Harnessing Z-energy is my destiny,” Dr. Giro sneered.
Spit and mucus and vital fluid should’ve been stuck in Dr. Giro’s throat. He should’ve needed to swallow, to pause before catching his breath. He didn’t and continued, “I have waited.”
Hand under the doctor’s chin, Allister squeezed the Adam’s apple and hoisted him off the ground. He waited for a whimper, an attempted gulp. Dr. Giro didn’t beg for oxygen or absolution, though Zosma begged on the doctor’s behalf.
They were connected, and they’d be connected as long as Dr. Giro lived. Z-energy coursed from Allister’s elbow to his wrist to the nails digging into his enemy’s fragile, wrinkled tissue. A fierce blue surge took an unsolicited voyage through the doctor’s jerking body, frying bones to ash, scorching muscles and tendons to dust, melting skin until it evaporated above them. Death’s torturous squeals became a jagged-tooth mouth spouting maniacal laughter.
A humanoid body shaped by dark mist smashed onto the stage. It squirmed on its back like an overturned insect. Far too massive to be squashed, it succeeded in standing, albeit hunched over. Five fingers melded to four, lengthening to long sharpened claws. A quartet of hungry eyes, red as an African sunset, blinked. A beak-like nose was molded in an elongated, reptilian facial structure and three misty horns billowed above its head like a crown. It straightened to an assertive posture and exaggerated spiked shoulders formed on the outskirts of a broadened muscular chest. The plump midsection narrowed into a skeletal waist as its body stretched to ten feet tall.
Allister’s mind malfunctioned, denying the transformation happening before them. Any words reserved for shock, came as primitive sputters. Sickness swept his stomach. Mouth trapped open in astonishment, he tripped on his way to Zosma’s side and toppled next to her.
Incoherent, curled up in a ball, she muttered “no” and a name he couldn’t understand. He gave her obsessive care, persuading himself for the instant he stroked her arm; he’d done nothing wrong. But there was no one else to blame for Dr. Rabia Giro’s execution. Allister had unleashed the sinister being dominating the room’s center.
“I have waited three thousand years,” the creature croaked, extending its arms to their full wingspan. Its carnivorous teeth gnashed in a deep, red mouth and a furious howl transformed it into black mist. The suffocating cloud tore light from their filaments, and blanketed the room in absolute darkness.
The smoky creature reshaped itself and bulldozed the stage, stray chairs, limp bodies, and scrap wood and metal from its path, intent on subduing the Uragonian princess. Allister squared his shoulders, primed to shield her.
“Allister, please,” Zosma said. Reattaching her broken crown, she switched their positions, him shielded and her in front. Energy flooded to her. “Zaian power is cosmic. You are no match.” She erected a shimmering telekinetic field.
“Zaian? Who is he?”
“It is Dylurshin Hexforth. The Great Betrayer. The Last Zaian. It has many names and even more faces.”
The thing she referred to as Dylurshin pummeled her defensive measure. Its shrill banging sent blue globules splattering.
“I believe,” she strained to say, “I can vanquish it, though I fear this innocent city will suffer as well.”
“You’re going to—no you can’t!” He held her armored shoulders. “The pulse’ll destroy Vancouver. Maybe you too.”
Zosma touched his rising and falling chest. “I cannot stop this,” she whispered.
Her ace of spades: an energy pulse. The card that won all hands, ended all games, emptied all pockets.
“I don’t want to leave you.” He stroked the nape of her neck “But, I don’t think... I won’t survive.”
“Your
people need you.”
Bazzo.
“I swear to Taldykin, my Father Star, my actions were not of my own malice. Please make it known to him.” She glided back, her forearm upright and said, “In unchallenged respect and devotion.”
“Forever and always,” he replied, holding his the same. Their eyes linked in commitment. Their limbs touched in promise.
“I’ll hold Dylurshin for as long as I can.”
Airborne, she rotated around herself, hands above her head, and as if composing Beethoven’s ninth, she brought them to her sides, signaling the symphony. The Z-energy field fizzled from the top, whittling down. Down until it vanished at her toes and left her vulnerable to obstruction.
“If it is my energy you seek, Zaian, then I shall deliver it to you in all its boundless wrath.”
“You will hurt me no more so than your ancestors did,” Dylurshin said, as it collected its influence to challenge her.
The room lightened to a solemn grey and reluctantly relinquishing his concern for their conversation, Allister called Bazzo’s name while he braved the misty presence occupying the small auditorium. A spine-chilling cry left the Aussie’s throat. He followed subsequent cries of agony to the outskirts. A metal rod clattered beside him, launched from the wall somehow. Maybe electromagnetism.
“Mate,” Bazzo sputtered, “Allister, I’m over here.”
Bazzo was huddled in the room’s quiet corner, cradling his own forearm. Allister had seen gruesome injuries on himself and on others, but none made his stomach turn quite like the festering, gaping hole in Bazzo’s hand.
“Zosma says sorry,” he said and dipped to offer his shoulder, “here.”
Bazzo gave him the intact hand and asked, “She on our side now?”
“I got through to her. She’s gonna try to... We need to go.” Allister hauled himself to his feet with a firm grip on Bazzo’s waist.
He limped to the grass lawn, Electric Wonder in tow. A nickname drafted in contempt took on a sweeter, more endearing taste when mixed with the dapper young man’s valiance and selflessness.
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